shoptalk

Come At Me PacSun

• Everything and everyone is all about the metaverse right now. Brian is starting to think that the “metaverse is just the internet now.” Maybe it is, hence why some think NFTs, crypto, and bitcoin are part of the metaverse as well. 
• When we think about DTC we have to remember what the entailed vision was: “to disrupt the existing industry or category with a product that is equal to or better than the existing products that are available and make them more affordable and get them to you quicker.” -Ingrid
• Everyone is capable of doing everything because there is an audience
• “Crypto bros are basically just this generation's example of extreme couponers.” -Phillip
• A company-curated around being highly curated and centered around good company culture, and innovation will beat out money every single time.
• “The biggest opportunity in this current market is right now, everything that is going to be worth anything is entirely based on curation.” - Ingrid

Associated Links:

• Future Commerce’s 2022 Predictions Episode
• Tune into Infinite Shelf Season 2!
• Subscribe to Insiders and Senses to read more of our hot takes! 
• Listen to other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

We're live and in-person together for the first time since we launched the Remarkable Retail podcast for this special bonus episode.

Steve and Michael sit down together in the Vegas Podcasting Studio (i.e. Michael's hotel room!) on the third and final day of the Shoptalk 2022 show in Las Vegas and discuss the key themes heard in the aisles, restaurants, and on the stage at Shoptalk 2022.

Steve's Talk Show Session

Improving Store Operations with New Tools and Technologies

Analog and still largely human-powered, store operations sometimes bear unfavorable comparison to digital’s ability to efficiently and accurately track, measure and control nearly every aspect of the business. However, retailers are increasingly building and buying solutions that bring digital efficiency to the challenges of running physical stores. In this session, retail executives will discuss the tools and technologies helping them analyze and optimize store operations.

About Shoptalk

Our attendees tell us each year that Shoptalk is the retail industry’s best event, consistently describing their experience as amazing, educational, energizing, exciting, insightful, inspiring, productive and fun. Held annually in Las Vegas, Shoptalk is an unprecedented gathering of individuals and companies reshaping how consumers discover, shop and buy. The event provides a platform for large retailers and branded manufacturers, startups, tech companies, investors, media and analysts to learn, network, collaborate and evolve.

Shoptalk was founded in 2015 by Anil D. Aggarwal and Simran Rekhi Aggarwal and acquired in 2019 by Hyve Group, plc.

About Us

Steve Dennis is an advisor, keynote speaker and author on strategic growth and business innovation. You can learn more about Steve on his       website.    The expanded and revised edition of his bestselling book  Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is now available at  Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a      Forbes senior contributor and on       Twitter and       LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel      here.

Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus  Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  ,      The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and now in its second season, Conversations with CommerceNext!  You can learn more about Michael   here  or on     LinkedIn. 

Be sure and check out Michael's latest venture for fun and influencer riches - Last Request Barbecue,  his YouTube BBQ cooking channel!

About Us

Steve Dennis is a strategic advisor, board member, and keynote speaker focused on strategic growth and transformation and the impact of digital disruption. He is the author of the bestselling book Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption and the forthcoming Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption , which will be published in April 2024 and is now available for pre-order at book retailers everywhere. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior contributor and on social media..

Don't forget to join Steve's new Linked Group for his new book.

Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice, a keynote speaker around the world and consumer growth consultant.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast,   The Voice of Retail, plus  Global eCommerce Leaders podcast, and The Food Professor , Canada's top food industry podcasts and one of the top management podcasts in the nation according to Apple, with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.    You can learn more about Michael  on  LinkedIn. 

Be sure and check out Michael's Last Request Barbecue,  his YouTube BBQ cooking channel!

Shefalee Vasudev speaks with mother-son duo, Anita and Yash Dongre, who are at the helm of one of India’s most successful fashion businesses, The House of Anita Dongre. Talking points include the 25 years old company’s family to firm transition, its commercial success rooted in empathy and a sharp reading of customer preferences, spread across a robust portfolio of daily wear to bridal labels. Yash Dongre, credited for taking the brand to a global audience as its business head speaks about building store experience and customer connection, besides the motivation behind joining his family business. The talk also includes notes from an Anita Dongre bride, who joins the episode to share her buying experience. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With Poshmark’s recent announcement that they are collaborating with Snap to bring social shopping to Snapchat, we revisit a 2017 episode recorded on location at shoptalk in Las Vegas, with a look at social and participatory fashion commerce mobile and online with Poshmark. Manish Chandra (Founder and CEO) and Tracy Sun (Co-Founder, VP of Merchandising & Strategic Initiatives) for Poshmark (a mobile and online marketplace for primarily women's fashion), join Pavan Bahl, Marc Raco, and guest host Liz Bacelar to talk seller/stylists, connecting to fashion pieces, and participatory commerce, being everywhere, consumers as sellers, and the heart of Poshmark, and discipline, what might be next, and grit and gut.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jaya Jaitly, an eminent crafts practitioner, activist, politician and president, Dastkari Haat Samiti founded India’s most celebrated crafts bazaar, Dilli Haat in 1986. In this third episode of Shop Talk, Jaitly speaks to host Shefalee Vasudev about the evolution of Dilli Haat as it completes 35 years and the relevance of a crafts bazaar in the booming e-commerce and handloom dominated retail scenario. The crafts doyen also discusses with Joydeep Roy of Coloroso, a Kolkata based handloom retailer, the prospect of developing new collaborative and contemporary marketplaces and the future of decentralised craft-based tourism. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Step by Step, a 5-part series from Future Commerce to help walk you through how to launch and grow a successful business. This season, we're talking about funding. Today is episode 5. Phillip & Brian are joined by Michelle Cordeiro Grant, Founder of Lively to chat about her experience working with Venture Capital from a founder's perspective.

Listen Now!

SHOW NOTES

Main Takeaways:

• Michelle Cordeiro Grant from Lively is back again to walk us through successfully selling your business.

• A strong operation foundation and consistent production costs can help identify where to apply raise capital.

• What are the factors that indicate that your brand is ready for an exit?

• Breaking through the noise of digital may require physical presence, so how can you achieve this with your brand?

Lively and Michelle: Some Quick Backstory:

• Lively is a brand and a community whose sole purpose is to inspire women to live passionately, purposefully, and confidently.

• Michelle grew up in a rural area of Pennsylvania and wanted to see what she could do with her life instead of more typically expected career choices.

• She eventually found her way into fashion and fell in love with the idea of concept-to-customer and the power of brand.

• Eventually, she wound up at Victoria's Secret that led her to decide that there was something missing in the lingerie community which ended up with the creation of Lively.

Pursuing Capital: A Founder's Perspective:

• With a story backward to most, Michelle left Victoria's secret with the idea that she could start a brand by having a community to build the brand instead of a company building it.

• She knew that she needed to have her supply chain completely under control so her strategy was to partner with an investor that was a manufacturer prior to launching her company.

• This allowed her to scale with what her customers wanted as opposed to what was written on a spreadsheet.

• Michelle did a $1.5 million convertible note with her manufacturer Gelmart and having the support and experience of a manufacturer in her industry set Lively up for success.

The Next Step: The Need for More Capital:

• Lively launched organically without paid media and after 45 days saw that they were able to ship to every state in the United States.

• Two months after launch, Lively had captured results that they had planned to do within the first year, which indicated that it was time to fundraise.

• Michelle's initial strategy was not to go after Venture Capital money, but rather to pool angel investors, but eventually started getting contact from Venture Capitalist firms.

• She wanted to wait for her Series A, but one email in particular from Robin Lee from GGV Capital (who worked for a VC but was also a Lively customer) changed her mind on VC and within a week of conversations, Michelle knew they had found their match.

The Struggles and The Victories: Accepting Venture Capital:

• Michelle was very worried about the expectations of her brand before she accepted the term sheet with Robin.

• In retail, a brand's growth charts like a roller coaster in regards to its trajectory and Michelle didn't want to be pressured for unrealistic growth.

• While her VC was always pushing her forward, Michelle was happy to discover that she had a voice and she could adjust her strategy to favor long-term growth.

• How can you preserve your visions of growth when an investor is now sitting with you at the head of your brand?

A Stable Foundation: Knowing Where to Spend Capital:

• Lively raised $4 million in its first round when they only set out to raise $2 million so the extra capital fueled the excitement for the brand's growth.

• Due to the fact that most monetary aspects of the business were so steady (such as a single price point for products and consistent production costs), Lively was able to clearly decide what to do next.

• A clear perspective of what was coming from an operations and a cashflow perspective allowed Lively to easily put the money towards marketing and inventory.

• How can you solidify your operations to help pinpoint where to spend your raised capital?

Vertical Integration: The Power of Structure:

• Quality was a goal from the outset and Gelmart helped Lively to create a custom manufacturing solution that allowed them to deliver consistently high-quality products.

• Because their manufacturer was both their investor and supplier, Lively also had the benefit of getting net terms and was a huge boon when it comes to handling your cash.

• Vertical Integration also allows you to be innovative by allowing you to directly address customer needs as opposed to serving just a bottom line.

• Lively grew by 300% from year 1 to year 2, so they were able to continually prove that they had the roadmap to success.

The Sale: Building Up to the Exit:

• The intent was not to sell Lively in 2019, but the continual success of the brand and the sturdy foundation from the get-go led to Lively's acquisition by Wacoal.

• One of the factors that made Lively such a desirable acquisition was its clean board of three investors that raised enough capital without becoming too diluted.

• Lively's clean KPIs and financials were a huge benefit to getting through the diligence of the acquisition.

• What were the factors that led to Lively's brick and mortar strategy?

Seven Year Cycles: The Digital Deluge:

• Are customer acquisition costs for digital marketing forcing brands to adopt local strategies in order to grow their brand?

• Digital marketing channels are so saturated that brands need physical presence to break through the noise of digital advertising.

• Pure digital brands like Everlane are increasing their physical presence because it is becoming more and more clear that you cannot only do digital in order to succeed.

• Generation Z has been raised on screens and is looking for in-person experiences to really connect with brands.

Beyond the Dollar: Further Benefits of Capital:

• GGV introduced Michelle to a lot of other founders that were 2-3 years ahead of her in their brand development which gave her a strong group to help answer questions and give advice.

• What went wrong is just as important as what went right when it comes to growing your brand.

• Conferences like Shoptalk allowed Wacoal to get to know who Michelle and Lively were even before there was any interest in the acquisition.

• Michelle would not have been comfortable taking the risks she did without the experience-based knowledge from GGV.

Adversity Along the Way: Not All that Glimmers is Gold:

• There was only one person doing customer service with over 2000 customers, so macros had to be designed to alleviate the most common questions being asked by customers.

• There was so much time spent on each component of the bras that some of the luxury components led to unforeseen complications.

• In October of 2017, Lively rebuilt their site and realized after launch that Google was doing a recrawl that required a rebuild of their organic traffic.

• What are some of the obstacles that inevitably led to positive changes for your brand?

Brands Mentioned In This Episode:

• Lively

• Victoria's Secret

• Gelmart

• GGV Capital

• Wacoal

• Everlane

• Shoptalk

As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Are you ready to raise capital to grow your brand? Does Venture Capital or Private Equity sound like a better fit for your brand?

Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin.

Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners!

Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

We all need Heroes - and Alistair Crane and recurring guest Ingrid Milman Cordy join us today to talk about how any retail business can become a Hero to their customers. PLUS: Shoptalk's own Zia Wigder joins us to talk about their decision to program only female speakers in their 2020 event. Listen now!

Join FC INSIDERS, a newsletter essay with deep insight you need to guide the future of your retail business, technology, or agency. Subscribe today.

Show notes

Main Takeaways:

• Ingrid Milman Cordy from e.l.f. and the CEO of Hero, Alistair Crain join Brian on today's episode to talk about Hero.

• Bridging the gap between in-store associate interactions and online shopping behaviors is an extremely powerful tool.

• There is massive untapped potential in local and smart brands are starting to make moves. 

• Zia Wigder from Shoptalk joins Brian and Phillip to discuss an enormous announcement about Shoptalk 2020. 

A Brief History: Alistair Crain and Hero:

• Alistair has always been in technology and he was previously the CEO of a company called Grapple that was acquired by a Visa subsidiary.

• He came over to retail about five years ago when an old friend of his had an idea of connecting associates that are in-store with customers that are browsing on the website. 

• With a standard retail cycle, there are periods when associates in-store have availability to be helping customers but there are no customers in-store.

• Hero gives associates and store teams the power to connect live with customers who are shopping on the store's website and gives customers guidance through video and live streaming that gives them a better shopping experience. 

The Decline of Footfall: Combining Physical and Digital:

• Why is it important to engage both the physical and digital in one place?

• Over the past 5-10 years, messaging has become the single biggest use of mobile phones and even before the start of Hero, customers and associates were connecting through means of social media. 

• In tech, technology usually tries to "create the wave" but Hero filled a need for a trend of communication that was already happening.

• Sales that happened from these online interactions were not being attributed to store targets, so Hero provides stores a professional, secure, and trackable method of associate to customer interactions and sales.

Traditionally Luxury: Unlocking High-End Interactions for Smaller Businesses:

• Associates connecting on a one to one basis with an online customer is a high-end experience that naturally lends itself to the luxury market. 

• Traditionally, only bigger brands (usually in the luxury space) would have an eCommerce and online footprint large enough to accommodate direct communication with online customers, but Hero unlocks that potential for smaller brands. 

• Younger, technology competent people just want to shop and just want the ability to find out quickly if an item is in stock and where they can get it. 

• Sneaker companies have been adopting this communication trend and have been using it in more and more innovative ways. 

The Importance of Local: The Future of Commerce:

• There has been a trend on the show highlighting the importance of local when it comes to commerce. 

• Doesn't it make the most sense to connect with local representatives when customers are interacting online? 

• You should also put stores where you already have business, and this can be discovered through communication tools like Hero. 

• How can you make the most of existing online customer interactions? 

The Shift of Messaging: The Death of Omnichannel?:

• A few years ago, omnichannel was omnipresent at conferences and events, but today, it is a word that is barely mentioned. 

• Omnichannel communication is now a part of everyday business and not just a sideshow. 

• Brands with heritage and locations around the world have a big advantage with their physical footprint against online exclusive giants like Amazon because they can provide an actual experience to their customers. 

• Smart retailers are making local pay with authentic local experiences by making their online customers come into stores.

The Power of Knowledge: Expertise Seals the Deal:

• Alistair brings up Ace Hardware as an example of an extremely authentic brand that demonstrates the power of associate expertise when it comes to assisting customers.

• Online DIY stores are overwhelming and it is so much more reassuring when an associate with expertise helps you with your questions. 

• Store influences have the power to serve as local influencers for your brand. 

• How are you capitalizing on your store associate's expertise?

Lingering Connections: Extending The In-Store Experience:

• Customers remember positive in-store interactions long after their time spent physically in the store. 

• Ingrid mentions how powerful it is when she receives a text from her trusted Lululemon associate that there are new items in store (which she usually ends up buying.)

• Brian brings up how impressive the knowledge was of the associates was on a recent trip to Everlane.

• Smart brands are brands that are encouraging and rewarding their associates for creating unique and personalized content.

Bringing Local Back: Massive Untapped Potential:

• Brands are ignoring the fact that local retail space is reasonably priced and there is so much opportunity in local that is not being tapped. 

• Brian harkens back to the recent episode with Ishani Gujral in which he came up with the idea of a bidding system for large retailers to bid on local retail space.

• Alistair brings up Appear Here that serves as an Airbnb for retail space.

• There is a lot of macroeconomic pressure to make your business successful before you even open the doors to your first location.

• Bigger brands like Etsy are starting to take advantage of the untapped potential of local.

Your Biggest Assets: Your People and Places:

• The people that work for you and the locations where your brand reside are the most important assets you have.

• Invest in your employees: give them a living wage, encourage their growth, and empower them to make them the best representations of your brand. 

• There is a lack of willingness in big retail to take any risk.

• Tech players take multiple year strategies, and retailers need to find a way to make some riskier decisions that will pay dividends in the future. 

Unselfish Experimentation: Non-Traditional Returns:

• Everything you do does not have to have a direct influence on your P&L and there is a reason to do some unselfish experimentation. 

• You have to try some things that are not going to work because the knowledge of things that don't work is just as important as knowing what is lucrative. 

• Experimentation is part of Amazon's makeup and they fail quickly and hard, which allows them to constantly be on the cusp of innovation.  

• How can you unselfishly experiment with something this quarter that you wouldn't normally try to pursue? 

Predictions and Inklings: A Postive Recession?:

• Alistair has been wondering if we've been heading into a recession and thinks that Q1 and Q2 of 2020 are going to be very interesting. 

• A recession would flush out the brands that aren't even living up to their own core values and Alistair believes there is too much funding floating around and not being used efficiently.

• Alistair wants to turn website traffic into actual footfall in-store and he is going to invest in companies that makes this happen.

• There has never been such a good time for product innovation on both the tech side and the retail side so take some risks.

Shoptalk 2020: Women in the Spotlight:

• Zia Wigder from Shoptalk joins Brian and Phillip to talk about the big news that Shop Talk 2020 will be 100% female speakers.

• There needs to be change in this industry, change is happening too slowly, and Shoptalk is making a stand with this decision to expedite this change. 

• Zia goes into some of the criticism and opposition that has arisen with this decision but has been surprised that the vast majority of feedback has been positive. 

• You need a transformational step to drive change because incremental steps are not effective.

A Big Change: Piloting a Shift in the Industry:

• In 2021, men will be included again the lineup, but the ration will forever be 50/50 from now on. 

• This change resonates with the social conscious dynamic in the industry and Phillip predicts it will be massively successful. 

• Zia is not worried in the slightest about finding the talent for the talks, but the challenge will be to find a list of speakers in the right topics. 

• You can apply to speak on the Shoptalk website along with many more ways to get involved with the event.

Brands Mentioned In This Episode:

• Hero

• Ace Hardware

• Lululemon 

• Everlane

• Appear Here

• Etsy 

• E.l.f.

• Shoptalk

As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! What are some ways that you could unselfishly experiment with your brand? How can you empower your employees to become the best representatives for your brand?

Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin.

Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels, we love hearing from our listeners!

Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

CVS launches "Beauty Mark," its truth-in-advertising campaign; while AI is generating plausibly "real faces." Meanwhile, companies like SuperPersonal are putting customers into model try-on videos. Have "deep fakes" - AI algorithms that map faces and micro-expressions onto stock footage - come to retail? How can they help? How can they hurt?

Show Notes:

Main Takeaways:

• Brian and Phillip are podcasting live from #Shoptalk2019!

• Deep fakes are getting a little too real to be comfortable.

• Personal body mapping for try-on is becoming a reality.

• Can companies figure out how to keep their data in-house?

Who's Waldo: Can Humans Even Spot Deep Fakes Anymore?

• Deep fakes are becoming more and more realistic, and it's getting creepy.

• Future Commerce was ahead of the curve in starting to discuss the phenomenon of deep fakes, which became a buzzword in 2017 when anonymous Reddit users began to use AI to map video streams of celebrities faces onto pornographic images.

• Deep fakes have moved beyond the original use-case, and have also been used in political situations, which can have serious implications, especially as deep fakes are getting harder and harder to distinguish.

• Also: an effort to combat photoshopped images and promote body positivity, CVS has launched a truth-in-advertising campaign called Beauty Mark, that puts a watermark on all untouched photos, and forces outside brands to identify any untouched images in their promotional campaigns.

• There are plenty of start-ups that have sprung up around this phenomenon, one being Truepic, an image-authentication company dedicated to combatting fake social media accounts, doctored photos as well as deep fakes.

• Want to be even more creeped out by all of this? There's a former Uber developer who has come up with a fake-face generator, and the images are a little too close for comfort.

• And just in case all of this isn't bad enough, here's a "deep fake" image of Steve Buscemi's face on Scarlett Johansen's body at an award's show.

Personalization in 2020: Turning Regular People Into Models:

• Personalization, especially in retail has become a theme of 2019, and the tech is finally catching up.

• Phillip says that while most virtual try on applications are not very good, Warby Parker has changed the game.

• Warby Parker's AR powered virtual try on is so good, it's almost like looking in a mirror, and they are using the same depth map as Apple's facial recognition software for iPhone.

• Another company that's working to change the virtual try-on experience is SuperPersonal, an AI-powered virtual dressing room experience that would allow retailers to "multiply e-commerce photography to account for different ethnicities, skin-colors, and age-groups, without the need to shoot multiple models".

• "Personalization in 2020 is the whole website is literally you".

• Brian makes the point that because of the last 6-8 months of advancements in AI and machine vision, models will not be needed, and will only be required as "aspirational content."

Levi's New Story: From Finished Goods to Customizable Clothing:

• One session that was good at Shoptalk was the keynote by Marc Rosen from Levi's, in which he talked about how Levi's was going to be offering customizable jeans.

• This changes Levi's from a company that just sells the finished product, to one that sells unfinished products that can be customized by the customer.

• And this is changing Levi's entire business model because now their fulfillment centers are part of the supply chain because they are becoming part of the manufacturing process when they process these customizable goods.

• And Levi's has eliminated a lot of the process that used to require manual labor to increase efficiency, replacing the old methods with laser-beams and finishes.

• Levi's has also hired an AI officer, to get better omnichannel data on customers.

How Can Companies Get to Know Their Omnichannel Customers?

• So because 2019 is the year of clientelling, retailers and brands are having to build relationships with their customers, and they need the data to do it.

• Phillip points out that the more companies aggregate the data in-house and operationalize it as a tech company, the more they will be able to figure out what works, and what doesn't.

• During Brian's interview with Chris Homer from thredUP, Chris mentioned that thredUP has a policy of testing internally, and figuring out what works in-house, before bringing in tools to supplement those processes.

• Companies need to figure out what works best for them and double down on that, and they also need to build real systems to house all the data that is collected, in order to utilize it effectively.

There's so much more to see and experience at Shoptalk2019! Stay tuned for more insights, and highlights from the show! Also, let us know, what was your favorite part of #Shoptalk2019 so far?

Go over to Futurecommerce.fm and give us your feedback! We love to hear from our listeners!

Retail Tech is moving fast and Future Commerce is moving faster.

Concierge Commerce is a new service — built on Craft Commerce Pro’s subscription feature — that promises to be a game changer for ecommerce retailers and vendors looking to connect by providing a one-stop platform to shop services and set up sales meetings. Founders Tae FitzSimons and Doug Hollinger have spent years working in the commerce world and discovered a common problem that required a solution: ecommerce retailers don’t know how or where to shop for the tech services they need when they need them. Likewise vendors are often not connecting with the right person at an organization, or even their ideal customer.

A big pain point for many retailers is there is no easy list or search service to find the vendors they need. With Concierge Commerce serving as the “counselor,” they are helping vendors talk about their products and services more articulately, and helping retailers learn to ask the right questions. But, like counselors, they are only facilitating the relationship - not giving advice or opinions.

Unlike most sites that create matrices with weighted arguments for one product or another, the Vendors on Concierge Commerce speak for themselves. Ultimately, Tae and Doug are building a roadmap toward a full service vendor selection platform where users can can search vendors and schedule meetings live on the site.

Tune in to learn how Concierge Commerce is about to become the ultimate matchmaker for vendors and ecommerce sites.

Key takeaways:

• Playing matchmaker between technology vendors and ecommerce retailers
• The questions you should be asking before you even think about looking for a new product or vendor
• Finding the solutions you need for your business, and not relying on reviews or popularity to make business decisions for your requirements
• Tapping into what your company does best so you can better articulate your products and services
• What you should be considering if your company is thinking about going headless

Resources:

• Concierge Commerce
• Shoptalk

"Hopefully, GDPR is the medicine we need to start putting our customers at the center of the story, and not our conversion rates." We review Shoptalk 2018 in the wake of Cambridge Analytica with a discussion about the content, the vendors, the experience, and how merchants can take the knowledge gained at a show like Shoptalk and turn it into actionable results.

"Hopefully, GDPR is the medicine we need to start putting our customers at the center of the story, and not our conversion rates." We review Shoptalk 2018 in the wake of Cambridge Analytica with a discussion about the content, the vendors, the experience, and how merchants can take the knowledge gained at a show like Shoptalk and turn it into actionable results.

Main Takeaways:

• Brian and Phillip recap some of the standouts of Shoptalk 2018 and how these standouts made lasting impressions.

• AR and VR are being implemented in new and creative ways and could very well be shaping the future of the retail industry.

• The technology that was being developed a few years ago is now being used in the state of the current retail industry but is there room for its development?

• Cambridge Analytica happened and shook the public to its core but will data security regulations like GDPR be able to prevent future leaks?

One Beef, Two Beef, Red Beef, Blue Beef:

• Brian and Phillip start by bringing up some beef between them that they at this year's Shoptalk Conference.

• Brian registered for Press Passes for Shoptalk and listed himself as Host of Future Commerce, and Phillip as the co-host. (Scandalous!)

• The Future Commerce content team accompanied Brian and Phillip this year to help capture the show and be active on social media.

• Brian and Phillip went out to Red Rock Canyon, and even though they got stranded out in the desert, they can not recommend the location highly enough.

Brian's Big Shoptalk Announcement: The Career Change:

• Brian made a big announcement at Shoptalk and let us know that he is now employed by Amazon (cue music)

• Expect the tone of the show to shift so that now Phillip will prod Brian until he is forced to recuse himself from the conversation.

• Brian is super excited to be on board at Amazon and thinks that his role working with the pay team and eCommerce platforms is a great fit.

VR in eCommerce: Separating the Virtual World from the Real World:

• Brian hosted a panel at Shoptalk in which he spoke with Brian Cavanagh from the Hershey Company, Mike Festa from Wayfair Next, and Greg Jones from the Google AR Team.

• The Hershey Company is partnering with goPuff to create a VR Shopping App that will allow consumers to purchase convenience store items within a VR experience.

• The first thing that jumped out to Phillip as he was watching the panel was the Hershey Company's unique take on VR, which is to not replicate a commerce experience in the real world in VR.

• Phillip describes the Hershey VR experience as a Willy Wonka-esque experience in which you can explore a colorful world and purchase almost everything you see.

The Retail Renaissance: A Recurring Shoptalk Theme:

• Phillip recalls that a recurring theme at this year's Shoptalk was the fact that retail is not dead, but rather, we are going through a Retail Renaissance. (And thus a show title was born.)

• Someone even compared the artistic progression of Picasso throughout his life to the evolution of retail to where it is today.

Digital Hurdles: Overcoming VR Roadblocks:

• We still think about the online shopping experience in regards to aisles and carts, but with VR being such an expressive medium, the possibilities are endless.

• What's the most efficient way to shop versus what's the most experiential way to shop?

• The biggest challenge that retailers will face when trying to get into AR or VR is creating a library of 3D assets.

• Brian predicts that the 3D asset problem is not a problem that retailers should have to solve, but instead, brands themselves will provide the assets from the point of origin to retailers.

Predictions Become Reality: Future Commerce at Shoptalk:

• Phillip talks about how nice it was to see so many listeners at Shoptalk and brings up how, for avid listeners of the show, a lot of the topics that were brought up at Shoptalk were things that they had already heard on Future Commerce.

• Iterations of things that Brian and Phillip had predicted on the show have come to fruition in the real world by brands known across the globe.

• Trevor Sumner from Perch gave a rundown of the store of the future that incorporates responsive and interactive displays that interact with physical items from store shelves.

• All of the information that we have available online is now available to us in new and dynamic ways right when we need it as we shop.

Trends and Topics: The Arcs of Future Commerce:

• Phillip takes us back in time and talks about some of the arcs of Future Commerce as defined by the main conversation points of each year: the first year was voice and conversational technology, the second year was AR and VR, and this year's focus has been disruption and protecting our private data.

• Back in October of 2017, Phillip and Brian advised a retailer that stated not to believe anyone that said they were using AI or machine learning because AI has been reduced to a marketing term without any actual functionality.

• Phillip couldn't believe that Shoptalk had an entire area devoted to AI and Machine Learning and that the application of what could be a transformational technology to retail is abysmal at this point in 2018. (Phillip's feeling spicy today.)

• Brian brings up a past episode with Jonathan Epstein from 2 years ago that had one of the best applications of machine learning that he's ever seen, and there hasn't been much more innovation in those two years by other players in the industry.

Making an Impression: The Standouts of Shoptalk:

• Phillip did not recognize the Handy booth until around the third day at which point he saw that they were everywhere.

• Handy has partnered with Walmart and will provide handyman services to Walmart customers in over 2,000 stores nationwide.

• Phillip also gives accolades to the startup Hemster, a technology/services company that provides tailoring and alterations (that are incredibly cheap) to business and individuals in addition to free delivery service of the alterations.

• Another standout was Mizzen+Main for the simple fact that it was an actual fashion brand at the show with clothes and that their domain name is comfortable.af. (Brian got to bring a Mizzen+Main shirt home and agrees that it is indeed Comfortable AF.)

Three Shoptalks Later: Using the Past to Predict the Future:

• Brian states that we have hit a spot in technology where what is being spoken about in Shoptalk is similar to what was spoken about in Shoptalk 1 (which was two years ago).

• Brian also predicts that the technology that we are using now will be used for the next 3-5 years and will power the next wave of commerce.

• "There is too much to do with the technology that we have and too much opportunity to make money on it so people will put their dollars and effort towards that and we will probably see IRCE and NRF follow in this direction as well."

• Is it a good thing that other conferences will start to look more like Shoptalk with the current technology stack?

Phillip Goes on a Rant: Technology is Not a Replacement for Quality:

• There was more than one brand that Phillip spoke with that had filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the past 12-18 months that ranged from big-box retailers to actual fashion brands and the fact that some of these companies were looking at AR and VR as a means to save their business was terrifying to him.

• The current technologies that are emerging today are not replacements for the fundamentals of being a good brand with a good product that connects with your customer.

• Brian agrees that if you are looking at any one technology to save your business, you are looking in the wrong spot as you have made some bad business decisions to get where you are today.

• "If you are in eCommerce and you are not connecting with your customers regularly, then you are missing out on a fundamental".

The State of Data Security: Cambridge Analytica Fallout:

• Brian references Episode 55 in which predictions were made for what was going to happen in 2018 and Brian predicted the idea of giving shoppers access to their data to help them leverage that data to accomplish things and sure enough, companies are beginning to do this.

• If you are affected by GDPR, you should probably consider that you don't want to run two different data strategies across channels and start planning your future data strategies now.

• Data security could not be more timely as the Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light during Shoptalk.

• What do you we actually need in our commerce experiences that can minimize data requirements as opposed to including everything just because we have the capability of plugging it in?

• "We need to put our customers at the center of the story instead of our conversion rates at the center of our story."

• Phillip predicts that in the same way that companies became "green" in response to customer demand, he sees an opportunity for companies to go private in which they will not partner with third-party companies to protect your data.

As always: We want to hear what our listeners think! Should AR and VR play a bigger role in the future of retail? Does the Cambridge Analytica breach change the face of data privacy and will GDPR be a step in the right directions towards the protection of customer data?

Let us know in the content section on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin.

Have any questions or comments about the show? You can reach out to us at info@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels, and we love hearing from our listeners!

Retail Tech is moving fast, but Future Commerce is moving faster.

This week we're joined by Emily Lewis and Lea Alcantara of the CTRL+CLICK Cast!

We talk about keeping up with new technologies, Expression Engine VS Wordpress, CMS alternatives to Wordpress, the creative process for designing for the web, how to find work/life balance, and more.

Q & A:

• 20:01 For years I have primarily used ExpressionEngine as my CMS of choice. While I still love EE, it isn't right for every project, so I am looking to brush up on my Wordpress chops. Do you have any recommendations on a few sites or other online resources that you use to keep on top of WP developments?
• 25:04 Is Wordpress usually the best CMS to use for client work? Are there better alternatives out there?
• 41:58 When you're just beginning a new design - when that completely blank Photoshop canvas is staring back at you - what is your thought process like?
• 49:22 As a business owner, freelance creative who works from home, I often have trouble balancing my work life with my family life. Can you offer insight on how you balance work life and family life?

Sponsors:

• 40:48 E4H: Responsive Web Design Summit - Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web's most notable experts in responsive web design and web performance for an all-new, three-day online conference, the RWD Summit 2015! Bring the experts to your desktop March 10-March 12, 2015 from 9AM to 4PM (CT).

Use coupon code SHOPTALK for 20% off your ticket!

• 46:12 Beanstalk - Beanstalk is a complete workflow for private teams to write, review and deploy code.

In November they launched their updated Code Review workflow. It’s a complete rethinking of how teams collaborate. Their review process is designed to start the discussion early and integrates directly with your branch, resulting in more feedback from your team.

Head over to beanstalkapp.com/shoptalk to get 50% off your first month!

Show Links:

• CTRL+CLICK Podcast
• Emily Lewis
• Follow Emily on Twitter
• Lea Alcantara
• Follow Lea on Twitter
• Bright Umbrella
• Converge SE Conf
• WP Tavern
• Chris Coyier: Digging Into Wordpress
• Susan Robertson: Overwhelmed by Code
• Perch CMS
• Craft CMS
• Cameron Moll: Why I Passed Up the Chance to Work at Apple

If you're looking for a job, head over to the Shoptalk Job Board. We just posted a bunch of great new jobs!

If you're enjoying our show, please take a minute to leave us a review in iTunes. We really appreciate it, and thanks to everyone who has already left a review!